It was independently logged[3] and monitored throughout and ended with a reception and press conference hosted by Aston Martin's then-CEO Dr Ulrich Bez at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane.

His second book Which Way Next[6] came after he drove a Daewoo family hatchback saloon from Luton to South Korea with a young student companion in a hair-raising journey that included running the gauntlet across war-ravaged Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass.

A member of the Society of Authors and a card-carrying journalist, Meredith has also published an anthology of his experiences as a writer titled Views From the Front Line[7] and a number of local history publications under a pen name including Cromwell's Garrison Town.

At Thomson's Evening Echo at Hemel Hempstead his newsroom colleagues included John Clare and John Coldstream (later with the Daily Telegraph), Tony Holden, the Royal biographer and Stephen Pile, the TV critic and author; while at the Express, his era included the brief editorship of former ITN newscaster Sir Alastair Burnet, Chapman Pincher, the Defence Correspondent, and Jean Rook, Women's Editor.

His grandfather Harry was a printer with the Evening Standard, his mother was billeted in World War II with the family of Reg Wootton, the Express's Sporting Sam cartoonist, and his cousin Frances worked in the commercial department.

In 1975, in partnership with friends from the Express and elsewhere, he launched the Northants Post weekly newspaper in Northampton (closed Dec. 2016) and later sold his shares to start the Holcot Press Group, a publisher of business magazines and directories which grew into a national organisation from a base in Milton Keynes.